Verbatim Vx500 SSD
Slim and speedy external storage
The latest external SSD to arrive at MacFormat towers is this slimline stick that’s pretty Mac-like, with its metal body and gentle
curves. The design is attractive and the USB-C port supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection to Macs that are capable of that (theoretical) 10Gbps bandwidth.
Verbatim quotes up to 500MB/sec when reading data and 430MB/sec when writing, but our testing revealed that’s an understatement. On our Late 2016 MacBook Pro, the drive hit peak read and write rates of 536.6 and 475.9MB/ sec. Its mean average rates of 447.4 and 390.8MB/sec are also good, better than some SSDs we’ve tested, though a few (non-RAID) rivals – including CalDigit’s Tuff SSD and Samsung’s T5 – beat it by a small amount.
The drive comes with a cable for connecting to Macs with USB-A too. This limits performance to the 5Gbps maximum of USB 3.1 Gen 1, but performance across all tests was on the whole what we’d expect of this.
The price we’ve given is the list price, but we found the Vx500 on comparison sites at prices similar to rivals such as the T5. Snap it up if you find it cheaper – it won’t disappoint.
Our one concern is that after running our tests for about 20 minutes, the case was fairly warm. That’s not unusual for slim SSDs, but we’d be reluctant to use a drive like this for lengthy sustained activity out of concern for its lifespan.